_— ‘ ; Ses a MA Ora | 
ps ees) a, ; 4 f pe j ~ iar 
; - or.} © 5 -oOyYY id BGI in 1 br 
es ae a j 4 4 KA om 
— A fs 4 Se ‘ 
A Re At’ > } fa 4, ” VN ai’ 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 123 


He is capable of a felicitous line like this : 
‘‘ Welcome, ineffable grace of dying days.’’ * 

Still again, of an image like this : 
‘‘He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling 

round a helpless thing.” + 
How could one surpass this? ‘The sun falling round 
a helpless thing.” There are still other lines having 
just that grace and perfection of form, of which he was 
ordinarily so careless. But I will not linger. 


sacredness,..ofindividual existence. I know of few, if 
of any, who have expressed this thought with more 
power, more reality. He holds on to the substance of 
the Christian tradition in this respect. Men are not lost 
in masses—classes, races, or humanity—to his mind. 
The individual man, the single, separate human soul, 
stands always foremost before him. It is as when Emer- 
son says, ‘‘Souls are not saved in bundles.’ They are 
not saved in bundles, and they do not exist in bundles. 
Every one feels, however closely he may be associated 
with others, and however blessed may be the association, 
that he is himself, and, in a sense, no one else knows 
him, and no one else can take the place of-him. 


‘«No one can acquire for another—not one, 
No one can grow for another—not one.”’ { 


—this is Whitman’s refrain. With this thought ever 


‘before him he declares that nothing is good to him that 
ignores individuals.§ We are apt to think that the indi- 





WI sy, VOL, ps 72: { lbid., Vol. I, p. 269. tdbids, Patz oS. 
e-lotd,; p.127 3. 


eeeie 


124 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


vidual does not count for much, that the species, the race, 
is all. We say in these days, and try to find comfort in - 
it, ‘‘ The individual dies, but the race lives on.’ But that 
is just the opposite of Whitman’s thought. Each and 
every one counts, and neither in time nor eternity can 


“any one take the place of another. ‘‘ Each who passes 
is considered,” he declares, and ‘“‘the young man who 
died and was buried,” “the young woman who died 


and was put at his side,’’ ‘‘ the little child that peeped in 
at the door and then drew back and was never seen 
again,’ “the old man who has lived without purpose, 
and feels it with bitterness worse than gall’’—all, all 
count.* It is this thought that breeds in him a universal 
human respect and a universal human affection. As he 
sits alone, yearning and thoughtful, it comes to him that 
there are other men in other lands, yearning and 
thoughtful, 
‘Tt seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, 
Italy, France, Spain, 
Or far, far, away, in China, or in Russia or Japan, talking other 
dialects, 
And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become 
attached to them as I do to men in my own lands, 


O I know we should be brethren and lovers, 
I know I should be happy with them.’’+ 


It is this same thought that leads him (as if to test it 
and make sure it was real) into those catalogues of all 
sorts and conditions of men, that to some are so weari- 
some or else repulsive. For how easy it is for us to say 
‘‘all men are our brothers,” or ‘‘all are the children of, 
God;”’ but how difficult to say, This felon on trial in 








* Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. I, p. 70. 
+ Zoid., p. 106, 





THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 125 


trial in court is our brother, or this bedraggled woman, 
or that far-away savage, that Hottentot with clicking 
palate, that dwarfed Kamtschatkan, that Austral negro, 
naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling, seeking 
his food, that haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee, 
that benighted roamer of Amazonia, that Patagonian, 
that Feejeeman!* Yet this is what Whitman says, and 
these lists, these individualized portraits, are eloquent to 
those who see the thought, the impulse that led to their 
creation. Yes, with a touch of humor that is rare in him 
(I sometimes ask myself, Was there any humor in Whit- 
man ? +—he is generally so deadly in earnest)—of humor, 
if it be such, that at once passes into the profoundest 
gravity, he says, after confessing he belongs to his city 
and feels the significance of whatever he sees there : 

‘«The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and 

tail’d coats, 
I am aware who they are (they are positively not worms or fleas), 
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallow- 
est is deathless with me, 


What I do and say the same waits for them, 
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.’’ { 











* Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. I, pp. 119-120. 


+ So G. Sarrazin. ‘‘ Whitman differs from Richter by a total lack of hu- 
mor. (ln Re: Walt Whitman, p. 161.) But cf. T. B. Harned: ‘‘Many 
Sunday evenings I called on my way to church, and he always enjoyed 
telling me with fine irony (for he was full of quiet humor): ‘Well, Tom, 
you know my philosophy includes them all—even the Unitarians!’”’ (1h 
Re: Walt Whitman, p. 356.) 

t Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. I, p. 68. 

In a similar spirit: 
‘¢ The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing, 
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing, 
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go.’ 
—lbid., Vol. I, p. 336. 


’ 


126 THE GREAT: SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


It is evident that all this presupposes a peculiar and 
distinct view of human nature. It is customary now 
(perhaps it has always been so, but it seems to be par- 
ticularly the case since the advent of modern science) to 
contrast the littleness of men with the greatness of nature. 
The world about us is undoubtedly bigger than we—if 
by we is meant our body. And if we have simply these 
outward material standards of measurement, it does 
become somewhat absurd to make so much account of 
man. But Whitman proposed other standards of meas- 
urement. How much of a philosopher Whitman was, 
I do not know—certainly there is no philosophy (no 
reasoned thought, that is,) in his poems, nor would it be 
in place there. But this one may say—that some of the 
ripest results of philosophical analysis and reflection are 
to be found here and there in his pages, though they 
appear as feelings, presentiments, intuitions, rather than 
as reasoned products. Whitman is aware.of the difference 
between_personality..and.all.other things. He pictures 
himself not overawed by nature, but standing at ease 
before..her,,. 

‘‘__aplomb in the midst of irrational things.’’ * 
“JT am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,’ + he 
boldly declares. He is not contained, he assures us with 
absolute simplicity, between his hat and his boots.{ This 
idea that there is more to man than what is seen, or that, 
as Tennyson puts it, man is not what he sees and other 
than the things he touches—this idea of a mysterious 
somewhat beyond the body or anything that can be 
measured or laid hold of—this is real and living in all a 


ow 





* Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. I, p. 16. 
1 402d) VOT, D.8a, TLo7rd.,iVol.1, poe ad. 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 127 


that Whitman writes. This inner life it is that makes the 
real greatness of man. It is that immediately known to 
man, and yet it is in a sense unknown—yes, far more 
unknown than known; it stretches out beyond the con- 
sciousness of any moment, or perhaps of all the moments 
of our life. 

‘Why even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my 

real life, 

Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections.* 
And again he declares, “‘ the real me stands yet untouch’d, 
untold, altogether unreach’d,’’} notwithstanding all his 
‘“‘arrogant poems.” Yes, this wealth of inner being 
which is other than suns and stars and greater than they, 
and the consciousness of which Whitman sublimely says 
should make our souls stand composed and cool before 
a million universes{—this it is in which and to which 
the glory of the world itself appears. ‘‘ The atmosphere,”’ 
he says (and Berkley could not have said it better), “is 
not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is 
odorless. It is for my mouth forever.” § The pageant 
of nature, of earth and air and sky, is, he feels, a pageant 
for man; it is in his eyes and in his heart; he contains 
it as truly as it contains him—so that if you leave him 
out of account it is impossible to say what it is, 

‘‘May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, 
shining and flowing waters, 

The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, 


May-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, 
And the real something has yet to be known,”’ || 





* [bid., Vol. I, p. 202. + lbid., Vol. 1., p. 14. 

| t Zéid., Vol. 1, p. 322; cf., ‘* That immortal house more than all the 
1 ws of buildings ever built.’ (‘* The City Dead House,”’ p. 285.) 

2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 29. Weldide, Vole l, Dy AOTs 





128 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


—which amounts to saying that perhaps a// things have 
an inner side just as man has, and that we make a huge 
mistake if we judge of anything—even what we call 
inanimate nature—by the outside alone. Of man him- 
self, he declares once with remarkable penetration, that 
it is not his material eyes that finally see, nor is it his 
‘“‘ material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, 
embraces, procreates.”** The central energy, the undis- 
covered life, the fathomless depths behind all that appears 
—that is the true man, according to Walt Whitman; and 
hence man’s peculiar and unique place in what we call 
the universe, hence his transcendent, and, as Whitman 
believed, imperishable worth. 

And whether we can follow all this, or are content to 
rest our thought of the worth of man on a basis of 
instinct and sympathy alone, few will question that man 
is the highest form of existence that we know. 

‘‘A ruddy drop of manly blood 
The surging sea outweighs.’’ 
To these lines of Emerson we all instinctively assent, nor 
is there anything in nature that does not stand lower in 
our estimation, and that we will not sacrifice, use up, for 
the sake of keeping a man alive. It is the old thought, 
“Ye are of more value than many sparrows.” Who ever 
did anything great for man who did not have a great 
thought of man—whether he could formulate the rea- 
sons for it or no? 

But such being the greatness of man in Whitman’s 
estimation, everything connected with him has a ray of 
‘sacred significance. The body does not exhaust him, 


but it is a part of him, an expression of him in this Mt 


* Jbid., Vol. I, p. 146. | 


| 


| 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. I29 


of his on the earth—and it, too, is sacred. It isa false \ 
spiritualism that is ashamed of the body, or of any part 
of it. There may be sayings of Whitman that rightfully 
offend, but there are other sayings that offend only 
because we ourselves are not pure and clean. They 
offend the prurient, but not the chaste and the holy. In 
the legend of our first parents we read that it was not 
till they had sinned that they were ashamed. When 
Whitman says, 

‘« Welcome is every organ and attitude of me, and of any man 


hearty and clean, 
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile,’’ 


and goes on with his wonderful description of details, 
this may be bold, but it is not bad—and it ought not to 
be bold to those who are innocent and blameless in 
thought and life. There is, of course, a time and place 
for everything, there are things we do not speak of to 
every one, there are privacies between two, there may be 
things better felt, experienced, done, than talked about 
at all (if speech is golden, silence may be golden, too); 
but that there is anything unclean in distinctive manhood 
and womanhood ; that there is anything low, vulgar, or 
obscene in fatherhood any more than motherhood; that 
there is anything in begetting more than in being begot- 
ten, over which we must cry ‘ Hush,” because it is 
something wrong and forbidden; that, in short, Whitman, 
if he erred, erred in more than a question of taste; that 
he violated any moral principle—this is a monstrous and 
indeed a blasphemous assertion, since it condemns the 
vi ry order of nature amid which and by which we live, 
ay d, if there be an Author of this order, condemns the 
ipreme Orderer, too. Said an honored minister of a 






130 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


Christian communion recently, ‘‘ Were we decently taught 
and weeded of a little of our pruriency—which is at the 
antipodes of purity—we should find Walt Whitman as 
clean as is the Creator.” * This may be too absolute a 
claim, but with regard to the poems I have now in mind, 
it seems to me exact truth. 

No, we must get a new seriousness about the body, a 
fresh sense of its part in our life, of its intimate connec- 
tions with the spiritual part of us. It is by this that we 
‘spirits veiled in flesh’’ communicate with one another 
in this world, it is by its energies that we continue the 
successive generations of men on the earth, it is through 
these despised avenues of sense that we take the suste- 
nance that keeps us alive and eat the bread of God—and 
perhaps not in surface appearance, but in its interior 
meaning, it is ourselves, permanent, as Whitman thought, 
while what is excrementitious about it passes away,f all 
that happens to it leaving its traces, perhaps its scars, on 
its inner undying part. It may be a solemn thing, how 
we use or misuse our body. Whitman thought so. 
‘‘Have you seen (he says) the fool that corrupted his 
own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own 
live body ? 

For they do not conceal themselves and cannot conceal them- 
selves.: of 

Who that has had the bitter experience of shattered 

nerves and exhausted vitality that sometimes comes to 

so-called intellectual men and women but will own that 

Whitman’s language is no exaggeration, “All comes by 





* Rev. M. J. Savage in Arena, Sept., 1894, p. 450. | 
+ Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. 1, p. 147; \c 
PP- 344, 25. t Zdrd., Vol. I, p. 86. | 


leg 


| 





THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. r38 


the body, only health puts you rapport with the uni- 
verse.” * Who that would be a leader of men but 
knows the truth of the words addressed “To a pupil :” 


‘*You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, 
complexion, clean and sweet? 

Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul 
that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire 
and command enters with you ?”’ + 


For my part, I find it difficult to dissent from a word 
that Whitman says about the body. 


And woman. Whitman’ s great d doctrine_of individu-\, e 


ality includes her, ogi ‘She is.not.an. appendage,. a..tool 


Cs ee 


ec 


for man, but his ‘equal. »ohe.-has..high.ends of being. as i 


well as he. With, characteristic_simplicity.and.plainness f 


of ‘speech | he announces, 


‘‘T am the poet.of the.woman.the same as the man, 


aed a 


And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, 
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.”’ { 


He.is.not-afraid.to.contemplate..the..enlargement_of the 
sphere of woman.§ He pictures the great individuals of 
the future training themselves ‘‘ to go in public to become 
orators and oratoresses..” || He does not fear that the 
larger life of citizenship will contaminate and degrade 
woman ; the great city to him is one 

‘«Where women walk in public processions in the streets the 

same as the men, 


Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same 
as the men.’’ J 








* Ibid., Vol. I, p. 265. 

4 lézd., Vol. I, p. 302. { Zéid,, Vol. I, p. 45. 

) See the successive portraits of women in ‘‘ Democratic Vistas,’’ Com- 
hae Poems, etc., Vol. Il, p. 235. 
|} Zo¢d., Vol. I, p. 365. § Zoid., Vol. I, p. 153. 


132 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


‘Her shape arises,” he declares in the wonderful ‘‘ Song 
of the Broad-Axe,”’ 


‘« She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever, 
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross 
and soil’d.’’ * 


And yet he never forgets the distinctive ‘‘ womanhood ”’ 
of woman, nor fails to celebrate her in her peculiar offices 
of wife and mother. He has his recognition of ‘‘ wom- 
anly housework,” + he celebrates “the oath of the insep- 
arableness of two together’’{ and ‘prophetic joys of 
better, loftier love’s ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, 
eternal, perfect comrade.” § I do not know what Whit- 
man’s private views were and some have doubted whether 
he believed in marriage, but I see nothing in his poems 
inconsistent with a recognition of a lifelong union of one 
man to one woman as the normal relation of the sexes. 
He speaks with honor of “the chaste husband” and 
“the chaste wife,’’|| and if he refers to “the adulterous 
wish,’ “the treacherous seducer of young women,’’** 
or “the adulterous unwholesome couple,’’tf} it is plainly 
with the same feelings that we all have. And of mother- 
erhood no one has written with more feeling or a pro- 
founder appreciation. 

‘‘O the mother’s joys! (he sings) 

The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the 

patiently yielded life.” tf 


Let any one read his lines in memory of his own mother§§ 








* Complete Poenis, etc.,Vol. I, p. 157. 
t Lbid., Vol. I, p. 335. t béd., Vol. I, p. 80. 3 Ibid.,Vol. 1, p. 47. 
|| 22d. , Vol. Tp. -1§6.°" YZézd., Vol. 1, tp.4 32.) ** bd, Vol. plot 1 5, 
tt Zoid., Vol. I, p. 156. tt Zdzd., Vol. I, p. 143. 

¢@ lbid., Vol. I, p. 376; cf., Vol. II, p. 282, note. 





THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 133 


or that almost stately picture, recalling a woman of the 
old style, of ‘the justified mother of men,” * and he will 
not doubt Whitman’s sensibility in this direction. This 
man felt the mystery of birth and the potent-spiritual 
influence. of woman, and_he_celebrates_bothwith—holy 


rever 


‘‘ Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, 
and is always to come unfolded, 


Ls 
be ’ 


Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be 
formed of perfect body, 

Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded, 

Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; 

A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but 
every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; 

First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in 
himself.’’ + 


As.Whitman.teaches the dignity. ofthe body.and_the 
dignity of woman, so does he teach the dignity of labor. 
He is a voice of the larger conscience of to-day, and 
sings things that were not sung before. Who has thought 
before of putting the mechanic, the carpenter, the mason, 
the shoemaker into song—or, if he has, has thought of 
treating them not as humble folk, picturesque in their 
poverty and struggles, but as his equals, his_comrades, 
his fellow-laborers in theworld ? Where is the great- 
souled democrat in poetry ? Not, so far.as I know, before 
Whitman. Some may have struck the note, but here is 
the full-orb’d chorus of the song. Others had the idea 
of equality, and perhaps heroically acted on it in relation 








to the slave (as Lowell and Whittier), but here it is a 


* Tbid., Vol.-t,-p.355- t Zéid., Vol. I, pp. 302-3. 


} 


134 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


palpitating reality for every day. How lovingly Whit- 
man sings the common occupations of men? House- 
building, blacksmithing, nail-making, ship-joining, dock- 
building, fish-curing, stone-cutting, boiler-making, rope- 
twisting—all these and a hundred others appear in his 
lines* as if to show that not one honest work of man’s 
hand was forgotten by him or left out of account. With 
delightful abandon he tells us, 
‘‘T am enamoured of growing out-doors, 
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or wood, 

\ Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and 


} mauls, and the drivers of horses, 
“| I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.’’ + 


_ What a picture of the harvest field— 


( ‘« Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty 
a angels with shirts bagg’d out at their waists.’” { 
“To. teach the.average man the glory of his daily walk 
and trade.’ §—this line of Whitman’s represents one of 
the heights of his ambition; yes, he would have every 
man see that he really does something ; every woman, 
too. And then what a lift he gives us in his view of 
labor! He sees that, sordid and commonplace as it may 
seem, it is kindred to the forces of the universe. 
(“Ah little recks the laborer, 
\ How near his work is holding him to God, 
\ The loving Laborer through space and time.’’ || 
Who more a child of the Divine, one might say, indeed, 
than he who reproduces the old miracle and gives form 
to the formless, and arranges, combines, separates, ane 
makes servicéable things for the uses of man? 





* Complete Poems, etc., Vol. I, pp. 173-4-5. |, 27d, Vol. Tope: 
t Lord., Vol. 1, p. 67. 3 Jbzd., Vol. I, p. 162, || Zo7d., Vol. 1, p. 157. 


mente 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 135 


The great idea of individuality, when it takes political 


form, becomes democracy. It means the abolition of 


classes, the end of obsequiousness, self-respect. The 
very essence of it Whitman sums up in his “Song of 


_ Joy,” when he says, 
© the joy of a manly self-hood ! 


To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known 
or unknown, 


To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the 
Garths* 

A proud, virile spirit.runs.through all this man’s writings. 

His word to Americans is ‘‘Reszst muchy. ei lille.” + He 
extols “the latent right of insurrection.’ ’t He admires. 
“the audacity and sublime turbulence of the states.” § 
He says, ‘‘ Let others praise eminent men and hold up 
peace, I hold up agitation and conflict.”’ || Sometimes he 
comes near the line of bumptiousness, and yet it is never 
that. There is a deep, sublime motive underlying.all he 
says ; and this is, that we are not made for institutions, 
laws, good usages and the like—but they are ever and 
forever made for us, and we must forever see to it that 
they serve us. We must look into what is called good, 
and see that it is good, we must look into what is called 
justice, and see that it is justice, we must look into 
law throned on high, and see that it is worthy to be 
placed there. . Once people become obedient in the old 
unthinking sense, submissive, imagining that the laws 
come from some wisdom superior to their own, and there 





* Complete Poems, etc., Vol. I, p. 146. 

+ Zbid., Vol. I, p. 15; cf. Emerson in ‘‘Politics:’’ ‘‘ Good men must 
not obey the laws too well.” 
ieieid.y Volo lj p.a7)> 3 léid., Volicl.; p..274.. ||Zoid., Vol; I, porso. 


he LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY OF fLLIt NO! 


136 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


is an end of liberty, an end of human development, a 
beginning of decadence. Is the warning unnecessary for 
us? Does it apply only to the old world, where kings 
and privileged classes are still allowed—though hardly 
even there as in former times? Look at some of our 
great cities. What do the forms of democracy amount 
to, when they are dead forms, when men, true men, ‘‘men 
who their duties know, but know their rights as well,” 
are not on hand to animate them? Is it not tame, meek, 
submissive beyond pity or sympathy almost, when some 
of our cities allow themselves to be ruled as they are? 
Is not the spirit of revolt, of rebellion, the proud spirit 
that will not brook the disgraceful practices that are so 
common, the very spirit that we need? The same might 
be said of some of our Commonwealths. A few years 
ago, the then Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania used this language at a dinner of the New 
England Society in Philadelphia. (Allowance must, of 
course, be made for the fact that it was an after-dinner 
speech; but there was evidently seriousness in it as well.) 
“The history of Pennsylvania is soon told. It was 
founded by one William Penn, who was for a time its 
proprietary Governor. It is composed of iron and coal 
and railroads. The proprietors of this State to-day are 
J. Donald Cameron and Matthew Stanley Quay.” * 
Yet at this, too, we laugh and submit. Which is better— 
this, or the “turbulence,” the ‘insurrection,’ of which 
Whitman speaks? To my mind, it is profoundly true, 
as Whitman says, that/the great city is one 

‘‘Where the populacerise at once against the never-ending 

audacity of elected persons.’’ + 





* Chief Justice Paxson, as quoted in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, 
2310eC,, 2. t Complete Poems, etc., Vol. I, p. 153. | 


: 
| 





THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 137 


Nothing else keeps the soul of a people alive. As 
Wendell Phillips used to say, ‘When there is peace at 
Warsaw, there is spiritual death.” Whitman glories in 
our industrial age, and yet he never forgets that nothing 
—no inventions, no machinery, no-spread of comfort, no 
perfection of material accomplishment of any kind—can 
take the place of self-respecting manhood in the individ- 
ual citizen.* ‘‘ Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization 
ol, ce thy Proudest civilization must remain in 

Yet with all sald and done, what an affection this 
prophet of individual rights had for his country! His is 
not the rampant individualism that is merely self-centered 
and feels no ties with a larger whole.{ The freedom he 
celebrates is not license§ nor does the insurrection he 
preaches the right of mean what that word commonly 
suggests to the mind. If there may be insurrection for 
any grievance, real or fancied, then had the South a 
right to secede from the Union, and it was criminal to 
put the Rebellion down. The answer.to-sueh-logic™on”™ 


_ Whitman’s part. was_his_ ‘‘ Drum-Taps.” _.What__fiery 


energy breathes through them! And in almost_his latest 
poem he says, 


‘«T announce that the identity of these States is a single identity 
only, 
I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble.”’ || 


— 











% <«T swear I begin to see the meaning of these things.’’ Jbid., p. 273. 

t lbid., p. 350. 

t Cf. the broad and philosophic spirit of his words in ‘‘ Democratic Vis- 

as,’’ Jbid., Vol. II, p. 213, note, and p. 219. 

%‘‘ Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind. Many 
suppose that it means a throwing aside of law and running riot.’’ (‘* Dem- 
ocratic Vistas,’’ /ézd., Vol. II, p. 219 and p. 336.) 

|| Complete Poems, etc., Vol. 1., p. 381. 


138 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


Addressing the Union in those magnificent lines, “ The 
Song of the Exposition,” he says, 


‘Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home, 
Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure. 


Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and States in 
thee! 
Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee! ’’ * 


Undoubtedly there must be a spiritual as well as a 
physical bond, and Whitman most powerfully says this ; 
undoubtedly mere constitutions or mere arms are 
unavailing— 


‘Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing will so cohere.’’ 


But that on occasions law may be used, and the unwil- 
ling, the rebellious, be compelled, he questions quite as 


little.} Whitman.was.indeed too great a man to be.a_ 


radical merely any more than a conservative. The 
freedom in which he believed was, notwithstanding the 
seeming extravagance of some of his utterances, an 
august freedom. It was a freedom consistent with what 
he called ‘‘the immortal laws.” t He sang of man “ for 
freest action form’d under the laws divine.’ § The 
modern political movement he interpreted as Freedom, 
with Law on one side and Peace on the other.|| In 
speaking of America he said: 

‘‘Lo, where arise three peerless stars 


To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom, 
Set in the sky of Law.’’ J 


It is this balance, this e equipoise of mind, that makes 








“g Comblap Poems, etc., Vol. I, p. 164-5. t Zoid., Vol. I, p. 247-269. 
} Zoed., Vol. I, p. 14. ¢ 1 bid,,°Vol, 1; pio. 
|| Zdz¢., Vol. I, p. 370. {| Zézd., Vol. I, p. 350. 





uy 
| 
: 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 139 pF 


{ 

Whitman great and sane, and prevents his being claimed 
by the sectarian. He had his strong insistances, yet he 
saw the place of other things as well. 

As Whitman sets his face to the future, he has 
unmeasured hope. To him progress is a jaw of life. 
The race has gone so far, it will go farther. There is) 
an atmosphere of divine cheer on his pages, the like of 
which I hardly know in any modern writer—or for that 
matter in any writer. 


it 


‘‘In this broad earth of ours, 

Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, 
Enclosed and safe within its central heart, 
Nestles the seed perfection. 


By every life a share or more or less, 
None born but it is born, conceal’d or unconceal’d the seed is 
waiting.’ * 

This i is his deep, central thought. Man_and_all things 
are born_with.an. impulse. toward..more.than..they.are. 
You cannot label them and say, this much they are and 
nothing more will come of them. Give time—“ the 
amplitude of Time,” to use one of Whitman’s great 
phrases—and even the primitive nebula, mere mist and 
smoke, becomes what we see to-day. It is a mystic, 
not a mechanical world, in which we live. There are 
fires, energy, hidden away in nature, deep on deep, and 
no plummet can sound them, and no temporary achieve- 
ment can exhaust them. It is a great, solemn, divine 
universe in which we live. Do we believe this, or, if we 
do, is it hearsay with us? Then let me say that here 
was a man, for whom the belief was a part of his flesh 
and blood. In an age of surface thinking and of surface 





+ Tbid.,Vol. 1, p. 181. 


1h 
yy 
ot toe a 


| 
} 
I40 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


fe 
iL 


living, of scepticism and ennui, he stands forth as one 0! 

the great believers. Others rest on the past; he too 

rests on the past and does not disdain it, but he is ready 

to go beyond it. This fair universe is to him a proces- 

sion.* Speaking of what the past has bequeathed to us, 

he says: 

“TI have pursued it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile 
among it,) 

Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve 
more than it deserves, 

Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it, 

I stand in my place with my own day here.’’ + 


“Outlining what is yet to be’’{ is one of the great 
tasks to his mind. He addresses America, ‘‘ Thou 
Mother with thy Equal Brood,” 

‘* Belief I sing, and preparation; 

As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only, 


But greater still from what is yet to come, 
Out of that formula for thee I sing.’’ 2 


He sang our Civil War, and yet in the ‘‘Song of the 
Exposition” he says, 


‘‘Away with themes of war; away with war itself!’ || 


«Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,’ he declares ; 
and in ‘‘ The Mystic Trumpeter” he dares to dream of 
“War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged.” ** 

And yet the progress Whitman celebrates is always 
in the last analysis the progress of souls. All he sings, 
he says, “ has reference to the soul.’’++ He never loses. 





* Complete Prose, etc., Vol. I, p. 85. Tid dtd. ed, 2G: 
t Zéid., Vol.I, p. 11. 3 Ldid., Vol. 1, p. 347. || Zded., Vol. I, p. 162.) 
1 Lod., VoleI, p..170.° ** Lbid., Vol.1,. 358. 1+ § 261d. 2V el. obs PAYS: 


Dy 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. I4I 


himself in material magnitudes, in general laws or 

abstractions. All is concrete, individual, and the prog- 

ress is the progress of single, separate human souls. 

“To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads 
for traveling souls,’’ * 

—such might be almost called an epitome of his phi- 

losophy. ‘I tramp a perpetual journey (he says in his 

homely, yet vivid manner), 

‘My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from 
the woods, 

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, 

I .have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, 

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, 

My left hand hooking you round the waist, 


My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public, 
road.”’ 


And then, 


‘« Not I, not any else can travel that road for you, > 
You must travel it for yourself.’’ + 


A. loving, yet.stern..and_salutary-teacher! What more 
moving and solemn thought is there than that the uni- 
verse is a scene wherein we are placed to grow, to 
unfold all the hidden possibilities of our nature, each 
“or himself, each separately valuable, each separately 
-accountable—yes, I add this, for though Whitman does 
slot make much of it, he does not ignore it, and says 
something of America that he would doubtless say of 
each individual: 


| ‘Tf we are lost, no victor else has destroyed us, 
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.’’ { 





* Complete Poems, etc., Vol. I, p. 127. 1 Léa, Voll, p.. 93. 
+ Z bid., Vol. I, p. 264. 


i 


— 


I42 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


And this law of progress, which is the law of life as 
we know it, is, to Whitman, the law of all life, the law 
of all the worlds. 


‘¢Gliding o’er all, through all, 
Through Nature, Time, and Space, 
As a ship on the waters advancing, 
The voyage of the soul—not life alone, 
Death, many deaths I'll sing.’’* 


—this is his message. 


‘Tf I, you [he says] and the worlds, and all beneath or upon 
their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid 
float, it would not avail in the long run, 

We should surely bring up again where we now stand, 

And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.”’ + 


‘There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage,” Is 
his conclusion. Hence the death we dread so much 
may be different, to usé his everyday language, ‘‘ from 
what any one supposes and luckier’ {—-yes, to his mind, 
is so. The principle he applies to all the varied stages 
of life, ‘‘ However sweet these laid-up stores, however 


convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here,’—-such _ 


words apply to the last stage as well, and to his rapt 
vision, we go, we go, he knows not where we go, but he 
knows we go toward the best—toward something great. § 
It is a sublime faith, one that nourishes, is good for) 
the soul. | 
The climax of Whitman’s thought and of Whitman's 
verse is, to my mind, reached in the “ Passage to India.” 
It is not for every day, any more than other things he 
wrote are for everybody. It is rather. a holy scripture 





* Complete ee etc., Vol. I, p. 218. t Zbid., Vol. I, p- 73. ff 
Pd Gtds ON Ole De Ba. g1bid5 VOL A, Dale7z: ) 


THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 143 


\of the new world, and should be read on stately occa- 

lsions in church or cathedral. - In it he rises to imagina- 

tive levels, the like of which do not exist out of the Bible 

or of Aeschylus. After reading it I know why Whitman 

speaks of dropping “in the earth the germs of a greater 
religion” *—-for this is religion, something that takes us 
into the realm of the vast and the infinite. 


“«Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 

At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, 
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, 

Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 

And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space. 


Greater than stars or suns, 
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth ; 


\ 


/Passage to more than India! 


© Pare thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights ? 












O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? 
isportest thou on waters such as those? 


hen have thy bent unleash'd. 
=| assage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce SLES 
_ 4Passage to you, to mastership of vou, ye strangling problems! 


~~ )Passage to more than India! 
0 secret of the earth and sky! 
TOf you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! 
f you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land! 
f you O prairies! of you gray rocks! 
4) morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! 
() day and night, passage to you! 





* Complete Poems, etc.,Vol. I, p. 23. 


144 THE GREAT SIDE OF WALT WHITMAN. 


O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! 

Passage to you! * 

Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! 

Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! 

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! 

Have we not stocd here like trees in the ground long enough ? 

Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like) 
mere brutes ? 

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long 
enough ? 


Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only, 

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, 
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, 
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 


O my brave soul! 

O farther, farther sail! 

O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? 
O farther, farther, farther sail!’’ + 





*Cf., Socrates’ picture of a possible paradise, as reported in the. 
‘¢ Pheedo:’’ ‘*The sun, the moon and the stars they see as they really 
are; and are blessed in all other matters agreeably thereto.”’ é 

+ Contplete Poems, etc., Vol. I, p. 322-323. 


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